In 1974 the Section had its first woman chemist as Section Chairman, Phyllis Brauner, who is still very active in the Section. Since then six additional women chemists have served in that position.

In October 1968 our Section hosted the first Northeast Regional Meeting (NERM). Much work went into the various arrangements for the meeting. Aside from the technical part of the program, one event stands out in my memory: For the formal evening reception we had reserved the music room in the Gardner Museum for the reception, the rest of the museum to be open for viewing. When my wife and I arrived at the appointed hour for the start of the reception, the museum appeared to be ominously dark. I thought at first that we had made a mistake and had come on the wrong day, but then a guard came out with a flashlight, informing us that the Boston Edison Company was working in the next street and had turned of the power "for a while". Without light, we were not allowed into the upstairs exhibition rooms, but we could gather under the arches surrounding the garden court. Mrs. "Jack" Gardner's house was built by her, copying a Venetian palace, except that the garden court which would be open to the sky in Venice was closed off with a glass roof for the harsher Boston climate. We had also engaged a small chamber group of Boston Symphony players to provide the musical background for the reception. Alas, the pianist could not show his art, because the grand piano could not be moved onto the small balcony overlooking the garden court. There three musicians held forth with candle-light, playing mostly impromptu because the planned pieces with piano accompaniment could not be performed for lack of the piano part.

As time went on, the caterer started serving champaign while we chatted standing under the arches surrounding the court. As we were ready to close the event, the lights came back on, and we could view the galleries and continue the reception in the proper setting. I am sure that this event has remained in peoples' memories much better than a reception that had gone off exactly as planned.

Perhaps the greatest scientific story in the Section lies in the work and recognition received by some of its members. Nobel Prizes in Chemistry were received by the following members of the Section:

1914 Theodore William Richards (Harvard).
1965 Robert B. Woodward (Harvard)
1976 William N. Lipscomb (Harvard)
1980 Walter Gilbert (Harvard)
1981 Roald Hoffmann (Harvard and Cornell)
1986 Dudley Herschbach (Harvard)
1990 Elias Corey, Jr. (Harvard)
1993 Richard J. Robert (N.E.BioLabs) (Physiol. Or Medicine)
1993 Philip Sharp (M.I.T.)(Physiol. Or Medicine)
1994 George AA. Olah (Dow/Framingham)
1995 Mario Molina (M.I.T.)

This scurrilous pun is almost, but not quite as low as it sounds. The NUCLEUS was only one month old at the time, and must have seemed to many to be a naked little baby, entirely at the mercy of the elements. No copy of this sheet has been preserved, but from the published howls released by the Editor of the NUCLEUS, it must have resembled the Police Gazette more than it did the Atlantic Monthly. If the incident proves anything at all, it shows that the Editor of the NUCLEUS has always had to bear more than his share of vilification.

[added by the editor] Rachel Bodley six years later resigned in protest after hearing about the infamous "Misogynist Dinner" from which ladies had been excluded, at the 1980 Boston meeting. But that is another story, to be told at another time.

Whatever happened to that $1.00/ that was left behind? Has it been out at compound interest all these years, waiting until now to become a secret answer to the annual anguish of today's Budget Committee? Perhaps, but there is no "North End Savings Bank" listed in the latest Boston Telephone Book [that was in 1973].

There is no Metropolitan National Bank in the Telephone Book, either.

Here, in the first two paragraphs, we have ample evidence that extraordinary teachers have always been concerned with the Section's affairs. Dr. Talbot's text: "Quantitative Chemical Analysis" was first published in 1897. This text, first revised by him, and later revised by our own Leicester F. Hamilton and Stephen G. Simpson, has gone through twelve editions [by 1973]. Dr. Noyes' text: "Qualitative Chemical Analysis" was also first published in 1897. This has been through ten editions, the most recent being a revision by Ernest H. Swift of the California Institute of Technology. The Macmillan Company, publisher of both texts, has continuously listed them prominently in its catalogue right up to the present day.

It is important to note that this election was just the beginning of service to the ACS for many of those elected. Noyes was President of the National Society in 1904, Kinnicutt was Chairman of the Section in 1901, Whitney was President of the Society in 1909, Little was Chairman of the Section in 1899 and President of the Society in 1912 and 1913, Alden was Chairman of the Section in 1900 and Talbot was Chairman of the Section in 1916. One of the losers in the election, J. Russel Marble of Worcester, was Section Chairman in 1913.

If the By-Law Committee accepted this plan, it did not last beyond the first year. During the next five years, the meetings seem to have been held on every day of the week but Sunday, with no explanation given for the random pattern. Furthermore, there was a June meeting (a plant trip to the New England Gas and Coke Company) in 1899, on the tenth, a Saturday. From 1903 to 1939, there seems to have been a definite predilection for Friday. The present plan, of reserving the second Thursday of the month for Section meetings, was begun on October 12, 1939. It has been continued, with less than a half-dozen exceptions, uninterruptedly from that date.

Samuel Parsons Mulliken, 1887 graduate in Chemistry from M.I.T., Ph.D. Leipzig, 1890. Author of "Identification of Pure Organic Compounds", first published in 1904, revised by our own Ernest H. Huntress in 1940). Dr. Mulliken's first son, Robert Sanderson Mulliken, was awarded the Richards Medal by the Section in 1960. [See also the article "Samuel P. Mulliken", in The NUCLEUS, 1997, 75 (5, April) 11-16., ed]

Although there is an F.H. Thorpe) (M.I.T.) and an E.E. Thorpe (711 Boylston St., Boston) among the list of members, the treasurer identifies the right man for us . He paid check #15 to F.H. Thorp for "Sundries as Assist. Sect. Local Comm." So we know who did the bulk of the work for that meeting. It was the low man on the totem pole.

by

Arno Heyn